Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Data center vacancy rates in North America have hit record lows, with reports from CBRE and JLL indicating figures between 1.6% and 2.3% as of mid-2025. This is driven by exceptionally high demand from hyperscale and AI users, which is outstripping supply and leading to significant competition for space and power. The tight market is expected to continue through at least 2027, with preleasing of new construction at high levels.

A Building Management System (BMS) is commonly used in data centers to monitor and control the facility’s mechanical, electrical, and environmental systems. With a BMS in place, it’s reasonable to ask: do you still need Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software? The short answer is yes—DCIM and BMS serve occasionally overlapping but fundamentally different purposes.

When you don’t have reliable processes for managing IT assets, you can quickly lose control. Asset inventories lose their accuracy, data across tools like CMDBs and spreadsheets stops matching reality, and no one can say with confidence what equipment is in use, where it’s located, how it’s connected, and whether it’s still needed. For data center professionals, a lack of asset visibility creates real risks.

Modern data centers depend on multiple teams, each using their own systems—CMDBs, ticketing platforms, cloud and virtualization tools, network and server management software, observability stacks, collaboration apps, and countless spreadsheets. Each tool provides important insights, but together they create a complex and sprawling technology landscape.

Uptime Institute’s 2025 Global Data Center Survey shows that capacity planning remains a top challenge for operators. Nearly one-third of vendors identify forecasting future capacity requirements as their customers’ single biggest issue, more than any other concern. Modern data centers face new complexities as digital services expand and hybrid IT architectures shift workloads across on-premises, colocation, and cloud environments.

As colocation demand surges, space is becoming increasingly scarce and costly. According to CBRE, the average asking rate in primary wholesale colocation markets for a 250–500 kW requirement has climbed 12.6% year-over-year to a record $184.06 per kW/month, while vacancy rates have dropped to a record-low 1.9%. With vacancy rates low and power costs rising, doing more with less in your data center is essential.

Accurately tracking how data center devices are connected—across switches, patch panels, structured cabling, and more—is essential for efficient data center operations. But for many teams, documentation still lives in static diagrams or outdated spreadsheets, requiring extensive manual effort. This is time-consuming and leads to inaccuracies that can cause delays in planning or troubleshooting and unnecessary risk. Sunbird DCIM changes that.

Note: As of publication, NVIDIA has not released final specifications for the GB300 NVL72. The details shared here are based on projections informed by GB200 benchmarks, industry analysis, and expected generational improvements. As the AI arms race accelerates, data center professionals are already preparing for what’s next: the anticipated NVIDIA GB300 NVL72.

As power-hungry workloads like AI and HPC become the norm, data centers face mounting pressure to rethink their thermal strategies. Traditional air cooling has long been the industry standard, but with rising rack densities and energy costs, many operators are exploring liquid cooling as a more efficient alternative. In 2024, the global liquid cooling market was valued around $4.18 billion and is projected to reach $13.2 billion by 2029.

Historically, data center professionals have managed their sites using traditional tools like Excel and Visio. While manual spreadsheets and diagrams served their purpose for simple tasks, they were never designed for the complexity, scale, or speed of modern data center operations. However, Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software is purpose-built to plan, provision, model, track, and monitor all infrastructure across all sites.